UngeheuerLich
Legend
In its curent form Skill mastery is boring, as every skill is eqully good for a rogue if he is trained in it, no matter what his stats are. So nearly every stat is a dump stat... boring...
Boring Skill Mastery
- Thread starter UngeheuerLich
- Start date
slobster
Hero
Let's examine that real quick.
Strength - Obviously many rogues will want Str just for melee combat. It's also good for carrying capacity and opposed rolls or saves for things both in and out of combat. Not a core stat for every rogue, but not something you can blithely drop an 8 in either.
Dexterity - This is obviously the stat you can't dump. AC, ranged attacks, and numerous skill rolls that either involve opposed checks (stealth) or potentially very high DCs (lockpicking) so that you really do get a benefit out of a high score, even with mastery.
Constitution - HP are always good. If you are running a rogue who has to wait for long periods of time in uncomfortable positions this might be a good buy, but that is understandably niche. Another place you don't need to throw points in like crazy, but that you don't want to skimp, either.
Intelligence - Int based checks almost always give you a greater benefit if you roll much higher than the base DC. A 12 might tell you that the monster you are facing doesn't like fire, but a 17 will tell you that it's because fires send them into a berserk rage, and a 22 will tell you that they are in fact terrified by the sound of laughter. So if you want to be a know-it-all, more Int is still the smart thing to do.
Wisdom - Again, the fact that perception checks are often opposed means that every bonus counts. Yes, low rolls become medium rolls. But as long as the enemy can get a lucky roll in, you want as high a bonus as possible so that you don't need to be quite as lucky to defeat that high roll.
Charisma - Cha checks are often opposed, etc.
None of this gets into the fact that all scores are linked to a save these days, so no score can really be called a dump stat in the way that Cha was for fighters in the old days (it didn't affect your character in any meaningful way at all, and most players wouldn't notice the difference between a 3 and a 12 written on their sheet).
Strength - Obviously many rogues will want Str just for melee combat. It's also good for carrying capacity and opposed rolls or saves for things both in and out of combat. Not a core stat for every rogue, but not something you can blithely drop an 8 in either.
Dexterity - This is obviously the stat you can't dump. AC, ranged attacks, and numerous skill rolls that either involve opposed checks (stealth) or potentially very high DCs (lockpicking) so that you really do get a benefit out of a high score, even with mastery.
Constitution - HP are always good. If you are running a rogue who has to wait for long periods of time in uncomfortable positions this might be a good buy, but that is understandably niche. Another place you don't need to throw points in like crazy, but that you don't want to skimp, either.
Intelligence - Int based checks almost always give you a greater benefit if you roll much higher than the base DC. A 12 might tell you that the monster you are facing doesn't like fire, but a 17 will tell you that it's because fires send them into a berserk rage, and a 22 will tell you that they are in fact terrified by the sound of laughter. So if you want to be a know-it-all, more Int is still the smart thing to do.
Wisdom - Again, the fact that perception checks are often opposed means that every bonus counts. Yes, low rolls become medium rolls. But as long as the enemy can get a lucky roll in, you want as high a bonus as possible so that you don't need to be quite as lucky to defeat that high roll.
Charisma - Cha checks are often opposed, etc.
None of this gets into the fact that all scores are linked to a save these days, so no score can really be called a dump stat in the way that Cha was for fighters in the old days (it didn't affect your character in any meaningful way at all, and most players wouldn't notice the difference between a 3 and a 12 written on their sheet).
I'd say that's great. Skill Checks are often enough boring in the first place. Making the resolution as unassuming as possible seems like a fine idea to me.
Wepwawet
Explorer
Every stat a dump stat? That's actually the opposite!
The game is much more than skill checks. This way a player can invest in the meaningful abilities for his own rogue, to make it the most similar to the intended character without being limited by a couple skills
Li Shenron
Legend
I agree, I think it's a big mistake how they changed it in the last 5e playtest round. And for what purpose? Just because a high-Wis Cleric is slightly more likely to casually noticing traps than a low-Wis Rogue even tho the Rogue is trained in Spot?
I think here the designers have been really... unwise!
First of all now the rules are a bit ambiguous on whether this should be a Wis check (as mentioned in the description on how to run the exploration phase) or an Int check (as per the Find Traps skill). Most typically, the Rogue won't have a low-Int anyway, this is less common than a low-Wis Rogue.
Then the fact that other characters (high-Wis Cleric or high-Int Wizard) have a better chance at finding traps won't probably last long considering that skills improve every couple of levels (ok... also ability scores improve by level, and personally I think they shouldn't).
Finally, the could just solve this corner-case problem by simply introducing a limit on what traps can be found by someone untrained in Find Traps. 3ed did this with the Rogue's Trapfinding ability, but I think it would be best to link this to the Find Traps skill rather than the class so that if you want you can also have a non-Rogue specializing in finding traps.
[OTOH, the already established "take 10" feature of Skill Mastery is very nice!]
UngeheuerLich
Legend
It is just, that I don´t see a reason, why a rogue should be better at religion, if he choses to be a priest, than a cleric etc.
Maybe it would be better to give each class some skills they are unusually good at and add a universal mechanic to those classes.
Maybe a rogue should get only a number of skills that he is better at, than his stats would indicate. Maybe he should have some "class" skills" those indicated by his scheme, where he may take +3 instead of his stat. But every skill beeing +6 really is boring.
A different Idea would make skill mastery just give advantage on all checks he is trained at.
I just think, a rogue who has +6 in every trained skill, always succeding on hard tasks, without rolling at all sucks.
You don´t have to disagree, but I´d rather like a different solution.
Maybe it would be better to give each class some skills they are unusually good at and add a universal mechanic to those classes.
Maybe a rogue should get only a number of skills that he is better at, than his stats would indicate. Maybe he should have some "class" skills" those indicated by his scheme, where he may take +3 instead of his stat. But every skill beeing +6 really is boring.
A different Idea would make skill mastery just give advantage on all checks he is trained at.
I just think, a rogue who has +6 in every trained skill, always succeding on hard tasks, without rolling at all sucks.
You don´t have to disagree, but I´d rather like a different solution.
A rogue is suppose to be that annoying kid you teach a game to, and he beats you the second game, despite the fact you've been playing at game for years. They're just naturally good at things-- they don't have to try as hard at things, and pick new skills up very quickly. So yeah, someone who's a natural speed reader would have a leg up, even on a devoted. I'm not sure what "better at religion" means either, depends on how you use the skill i guess.
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GMforPowergamers
Legend
My next rogue will be "Mike Ross" with an eidetic memory
Having tested the Rogue's auto +3 for ability mod and the Take 10 rule... I would also agree that it's been rather lame. Always having a floor of 16 every time the Rogue made a skill check removed most of the drama.
My own personal preference is that rather than the auto +3 and the Take 10... the Rogue just gets to make every skill check with Advantage as standard. His chance to succeed is now much greater than everyone else... but there's still the slight chance of failure. It's much more in keeping with the whole theory of 'bounded accuracy', where no one should be numerically priced out of a challenge (either with success or failure) based upon what the other characters in the party can do.
So thus even the low-Wis Rogue making a check to find a trap still gets to roll twice and probably succeed more often than the high-Wis Cleric. And what's better about that, is that it also emulates the situation that *if* the PCs are trying to make a check in a bad situation (because of combat, weather, or any of those sorts of things)... while the rest of the party all make the check with Disadvantage... the Rogue gets to just make the check normally (as his Advantage and the Disadvantage cancel each other out).
That being said... in reference to your second point though, I disagree. Because you're still looking at the class/skill connection through the eyes of previous editions, where it was your class that told you how good you were supposed to be at all these skills. 'A Cleric is a religious class, and thus should have the best Religion check'.
But in DDN that's no longer the case. It's not the class that tells you what your focus and study has been over these past years as you've learned stuff... it's your Background. Cleric now no longer implies 100% that he is the end-all-be-all religious character. All being a Cleric means is that he has the power to cast Divine spells. He has the spark of the divine in him... but that doesn't mean he's a would-be Cardinal. With the advent of the Background system... now classes outside of the divine spellcasters can have just as much knowledge and training in religion (and in many cases, even more) as the Cleric does.
After all... a Cleric Commoner might just be a young urchin boy who's been 'touched by a god' to do great things in his name and given these odd magical blessings with which to do them. Whereas a Rogue Priest might be an archivist of a Church who's never been blessed by his god to use magic, but instead has devoted his life to working and running within the Church hierarchy. So it makes easy sense why the Rogue would have the better chance to succeed at Religious Lore checks than the Cleric.
Now granted... the disconnect could certainly come when a player at some table somewhere selects Rogue for his class and Priest for his background but then never actually plays the character very priestly or actually used his background for character development. And the player of the Cleric would then rightly ask "why is his character better at Religious Lore than mine is?"... but that's a probably more of not playing the character you've built, as opposed to some flaw within the game system itself.
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Rhenny
Adventurer
I would accept the gain advantage on trained skills idea, but we've been using the "take 10" use ability or +3 and it hasn't been so bad.
I did house rule that the rogue player has to roll the die even if he has the DC of the task beaten. If he rolls a "1", I throw in a complicaton. Even that little bit of doubt made the "take 10" +3 more dramatic/interesting.
I did house rule that the rogue player has to roll the die even if he has the DC of the task beaten. If he rolls a "1", I throw in a complicaton. Even that little bit of doubt made the "take 10" +3 more dramatic/interesting.
